The disclosures herein relate generally to computer systems and more particularly to cooling and accessing hard drives mounted in a computer chassis.
A computer unit, such as a server for example, includes a hard drive or a stack of hard drives. The hard drives are stored in a chassis including a hard drive housing such that an access face of the hard drive housing is flush mounted with a surface of the chassis. At the rear of the housing, opposite the access face, a backplane is provided. A hard drive inserted into the housing is plugged into a connector provided on the backplane.
The backplane is a solid planar member and is positioned perpendicular to the hard drive. As such, the backplane is perpendicular to, and blocks the flow of, cooling air which flows through the housing to remove heat generated by the hard drive. Also, the depth of the hard drive, being greater than its width, creates an elongated flow path for cooling air to travel through the housing.
In order to provide adequate cooling for the hard drive housing, larger fans, blowers and ducting may be provided. However, this creates problems because such solutions occupy valuable space within the unit and add to the system noise, power consumption and cost. Another solution may be to provide vent holes in the backplane, but this limits backplane design options.
Therefore, what is needed is a hard drive housing which provides access to remove and insert hard drives when required, and which is adequately cooled for removing heat generated by the hard drives.
One embodiment, accordingly, permits the hard drive housing to be mounted in the unit, such that the backplane is parallel to the direction of cooling air flow, and also permits access for removing and inserting hard drives when required. To this end, a swing-out hard drive device includes a chassis, a slider reciprocably mounted in the chassis, and a housing rotatably mounted in the chassis and connected to move the slider into and out of the chassis in response to rotation of the housing in the chassis.
A principal advantage of this embodiment is that cooling of the hard drives is enhanced and access to the hard drives is not compromised.